The Case for the Chief Data Officer: Recasting the C-Suite to Leverage Your Most Valuable Asset PDF
Preview The Case for the Chief Data Officer: Recasting the C-Suite to Leverage Your Most Valuable Asset
The Case for the Chief Data Officer The Case for the Chief Data Officer Recasting the C-Suite to Leverage Your Most Valuable Asset Peter Aiken Virginia Commonwealth University/Data Blueprint Michael Gorman Whitemarsh Information Systems Corporation AMSTERDAM(cid:129)BOSTON(cid:129)HEIDELBERG(cid:129)LONDON NEWYORK(cid:129)OXFORD(cid:129)PARIS(cid:129)SANDIEGO SANFRANCISCO(cid:129)SINGAPORE(cid:129)SYDNEY(cid:129)TOKYO MorganKaufmannisanimprintofElsevier MorganKaufmannisanimprintofElsevier 225WymanStreet,Waltham,MA,02451,USA Firstpublished2013 Copyrightr2013ElsevierInc.Allrightsreserved. Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproducedortransmittedinanyformorbyanymeans, electronicormechanical,includingphotocopying,recording,oranyinformationstorageand retrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthepublisher.Detailsonhowtoseek permission,furtherinformationaboutthePublisher’spermissionspoliciesandourarrangement withorganizationssuchastheCopyrightClearanceCenterandtheCopyrightLicensingAgency, canbefoundatourwebsite:www.elsevier.com/permissions Thisbookandtheindividualcontributionscontainedinitareprotectedundercopyrightbythe Publisher(otherthanasmaybenotedherein). Notices Knowledgeandbestpracticeinthisfieldareconstantlychanging.Asnewresearchand experiencebroadenourunderstanding,changesinresearchmethods,professionalpractices, ormedicaltreatmentmaybecomenecessary. Practitionersandresearchersmustalwaysrelyontheirownexperienceandknowledge inevaluatingandusinganyinformation,methods,compounds,orexperimentsdescribedherein. Inusingsuchinformationormethodstheyshouldbemindfuloftheirownsafetyandthesafety ofothers,includingpartiesforwhomtheyhaveaprofessionalresponsibility. Tothefullestextentofthelaw,neitherthePublishernortheauthors,contributors,oreditors, assumeanyliabilityforanyinjuryand/ordamagetopersonsorpropertyasamatterofproducts liability,negligenceorotherwise,orfromanyuseoroperationofanymethods,products, instructions,orideascontainedinthematerialherein. BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData AcatalogrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryofCongress ISBN:978-0-12-411463-0 ForinformationonallMKpublications visitourwebsiteatwww.mkp.com DEDICATION This book is dedicated to our colleague Burt Parker (1945(cid:1)2010) who performed some of Data Management’s foundational research. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Major inspiration for this research came from in-depth discussions with Dr. Tom Redman and his influence is gratefully acknowledged. The first author gratefully thanks the second author for our terrific discussions across the various issues. The exchanges were among the best in my professional career and I gratefully acknowledge the substan- tive revisions, enhancements, and extensions of my original remarks. We acknowledge the effort of our reviewers who provided us excel- lent feedback on various stages of the draft (cid:1) these included: John Botega Joe Cipolla David Loshin Lyn McDermid Jim O’Brien Anne Marie Smith, Ph.D. Our wonderful acquisition/production team of Andrea Dierna and Heather Scherer contributed to the project at all stages. Finally, both authors thank the literally hundreds of unnamed DM professionals and CIOs with whom we have worked, who have pro- vided their insights, and who contributed to our understanding of this field as it is practiced and as it needs to be practiced. ABOUT THE AUTHORS Peter Aiken is widely acclaimed as one of the top ten data management authorities in the world. In addition to examining the data management practices of more than 500 organizations, he has spent multi-year immersions with organizations as diverse as the US DoD, Deutsche Bank, Nokia, Wells Fargo, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. As President of DAMA International (dama.org), his expertise in the prac- tice is unquestioned. He has been a member of the Information Systems Department at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Business since 1993 and jointly owns, with the University, Data Blueprint(.com) an award-winning, data management/IT consulting firm. Michael Gorman has been involved in IT for over 45 years. He is the Secretary of the ANSI/INCITS Technical Committee on Database Languages, DM32.2 since 1978, co-authoring all SQL standards. Gorman worked for System Development Corporation which, with MITRE and Lincoln Labs invented data management. For the CIO of the US Army he helped develop their data management program includ- ing policies, procedures, and seminars. Gorman brought Database Management Systems into Federal Agencies including the Army, Navy, Air Force, EPA, HUD, Commerce as well as State and local govern- ments. He also provided data management consulting to Fortune 100 companies. As CEO of Whitemarsh (www.wiscorp.com), Gorman pro- vides consulting, methodologies, books, workshops and Whitemarsh Metabase, a metadata management system. He has authored numerous books, publishes regularly on The Data Administration Newsletter (www.tdan.com), and has taught at Universities, at DAMA Chapters, and International Conferences. FOREWORD It’s clear that technology is all around us, from your cell phone to your DVR. What we don’t think about is the role that data plays. Technology is second nature to us and it’s time for data to be the same. To truly tap the value of data we must manage it first, sepa- rately from technology. My first exposure to the power of data was in 1989 and I found myself perplexed when people outside my organization didn’t under- stand the concept of leveraging data to drive better business decisions and ultimately increase profits. At that time technology-based data implementations were a novelty. Data was limited in availability and its storage costs were astronomical. Today everyone talks about data and information-based strategies. Technology’s incorporation into all manners of business transactions is commonplace. Data is growing exponentially and storage is cheap. However, we continue to be challenged by the fact that the data isn’t supporting the business to its fullest extent. Even in those places where the data is supporting the business, acts of heroism are often required to unite disparate data to unearth new business insights. It’s difficult to quantify the challenge of disorganized data because strategies to create data architectures, independent from data’s encapsulation within busi- ness information systems are almost non-existent. Data materializes from within natural business transactions. It is inherently multi-dimensional. Because business information systems only capture parochially-based subsets of this data, much of its ability to be subsequently recast into different forms and uses is forever lost. Because of this business information system centric strategy, we con- tinue to have suboptimal, single/restricted-use data that cannot be advantaged for the business. If systems are built to support the business processes, shouldn’t there also be systems that capture business data within its natural business-transaction contexts as well? If so, then Data Management’s xiv Foreword role is to enable the successful architecture, engineering, capture, stor- age, and ability to leverage business data to drive better decisions and ultimately increase profits. While the journey to well-managed data and ultimately the use data to achieve a business’s strategic advantage is long, it all starts with an organization’s recognition of the independence of data from its encap- sulation within business information system centric processes. Data needs the same dedicated focus that technology has enjoyed if we truly want it to achieve its full potential. Now is the time to embrace the next generation in the data journey that must be focused on how to best manage that abundance of data and put it to work for the business. The authors have dedicated their careers to educating themselves and others on best-in-class data management practices and through that work have a clear line of sight on how to ensure that the 21st cen- tury makes the most of this amazing asset. Peter Aiken and Michael Gorman have joined forces to describe the data challenges that most of us see but struggle to articulate, much less solve. I am hoping that all of you will see that these problems really exist and this book gives you the solution, which now in retrospect seems so simple. So, I chal- lenge each of you, what will you do differently tomorrow with the information you will learn today? Cathy Doss was Chief Data Officer of Capital One from January 2002 to December 2005. No one has challenged the claim that she was the first appointed CDO or that CapitalOne’s CDO played a key role in its successful Information-based Business Strategy (IBS). Cathryne Clay Doss EXECUTIVE SUMMARY How to Obtain a Data Advantage Data are an organization’s sole, non-depletable, non-degrading, dura- ble asset. This book makes the case for dedicating an individual to leverage them as assets (cid:1) a Chief Data Officer or CDO. Only through a proficient individual: 1. Dedicated solely to data asset leveraging, 2. Unconstrained by an IT project mindset, and 3. Reporting directly to the business can organizations expect to leverage their data assets. Data pos- sesses properties worthy of additional investment. Many existing CDOs1 are fatally crippled, lacking one or more of these necessary pil- lars. Often organizations have some or all components already in place but not operating in a coordinated manner. By the end of the book, you will understand these pillars, why each is necessary (but insuffi- cient), and what do to about it. Briefly this book covers: 1. Engineering our organizations to deal with the impending data tsunami. Data and its use are becoming increasingly important to your orga- nization. If you haven’t already heard of big data and how it is ‘transforming’ your world, you will soon. Data’s importance and scale continues to increase at an exponential rate. Difficult as it is to manage now, data management (DM) is going to get much more difficult, very quickly, based just on the forecast volume and dimensionality increases. In the face of this onslaught, we must transform our concept of DM and organizational processing: from part of IT, to supporting an organization engineered to leverage its data and surf the data tsunami. 2. More than likely, you, your IT leadership, your organizational knowledge workers have not had opportunity to acquire the requisite 1Our2013surveyresearchindicatedthat70%ofcurrentCDOpositionshadexistedforlessthan oneyear,19%hadexistedfor1(cid:1)3years,and8%for3(cid:1)5years.
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